“No, I can’t imagine.... If I hear the least thing, I’ll let you know.” Gilberte was very much vexed when Adèle told her what had happened. She had no doubt that Guillaume de la Vaudraye had told his mother what he knew of the incident and she was distressed at being the cause of disagreement, complication and gossip. “Perhaps,” she thought, “all this would not have come about if I had not been looked upon as married.” And, as a matter of fact, she seemed, as a married woman, to be exposed to unpleasantness which she would have escaped in the position of a girl. Instead of the quiet which she had sought, she found, in the men’s behaviour, in their conversation, in their way of looking at her, in the persistency of their pursuit, a host of disturbing little annoyances which might well have troubled a mind less innocent than hers. She went to Mme. de la Vaudraye, in the afternoon, and begged her to reconsider her decision. “It is no use asking me,” cried Mme. de la Vaudraye. “I admit that, in writing to those two gentlemen, I did no more than my duty; but it was my son who pointed out to me how imperative that duty was.” She was in a bad temper and, when all is said, with reason. No mistress of a house lightly gives up two individuals of the undoubted merit of M. Beaufrelant and M. le Hourteulx. She called out: “Guillaume, Mme. Armand wants to talk to you!” And, when her son entered the room, she went out. Gilberte, who was always frightened by Guillaume’s obvious coldness and his excessive reserve, blushed as she made her request. Ought so much importance to be attached to an incident which the two gentlemen surely regretted and at which she could only laugh? “My mother and I have no right to laugh at it,” he said. “We are responsible for all the people whom we introduce to you. If one of them treats you with disrespect, we must not expose you to meeting him here.” “But how have they treated me with disrespect?... I assure you, I don’t see it....” He looked at her, turned away his head and said, in a voice so abrupt that she could not make out whether his answer was full of contemptuous pity or affectionate admiration: “It is the others, it is all of us who must see for you.... How can you be expected to see those things?” He paused and continued: “Are you very anxious to have those two boors back here?” “For your mother’s sake, yes. I feel that the situation grieves her.” “Why, of course,” he exclaimed, with cutting irony, “they are the two finest ornaments of her _salon_! How will the others do without them? How will they manage to rattle out the regulation tomfoolery? Will they ever be able to reach the required level of absurdity, affectation, stupidity and narrowness? Heavens, if we were a shade less dull and less inane, what a catastrophe!” “It’s not right of you to talk like that, monsieur,” said Gilberte. “What!” he said, taken aback.